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Being the experienced European types that we are, we've had many experiences with a good friend of ours named "Jet-Lag." Our system for ourselves and everyone who came to visit us while we lived in France was basically to suffer through the first day and then sleep a normal 8 hours from whenever you could last until at night (usually just after dinner at 8pm) until a reasonable hour the next morning - say 8am.

If you actually get 12 uninterrupted hours of sleep your first night in Europe and wake up when it is morning local time, you will have defeated "Jet-Lag" completely.

What usually happens however is that you sleep from 8 till about 11:30 and then from about 12:30 (after you take something) till 3am and then from somewhere between 5 and 7 until the maid comes and knocks on your door and tells you its time to checkout . . .

We were always happy to interrupt our guests before the maid in order to avoid the unpleasantness of a possible 6 hour nap from 8am till 2pm that would effectively screw you for your entire 8 day trip to Europe.

On our most recent 14 day trip (which we are on while I am typing this message), our friends picked us up from the airport at around 1pm in the afternoon. We did great, renting a car and making it through dinner at their home. We managed to last until about 10:30pm when the attempt at sleep began. I made it from about 10:30 to 1am and then fell back to sleep around 4. From this point, earplugs, black out the sun shutters in our room, and not having any type of clock to look at combined to screw us over to the tune of letting us sleep till about 2pm. Even our friend's 1 and 3 year old didn't wake us up.

We made the best of it by getting out and about and visiting some of the more prominent sites in Marseille - Notre Dame de la Garde and Le Vieux Port. The photo above is me in front of a view of Marseille from the hill on which ND d.l. Garde sits.

The day was short and it culminated in us finding the grocery store, where we endulged by buying all the old favorites we enjoyed while we lived in France. Our grocery list might surprise you as it isn't filled with pain au chocolate and baguettes but we've got our reasons:
1) Straight for the Foie Gras de Canard
2) That curled up hard French salami (very salty good with cream cheese)
3) Pain Complet (wheat bread is good for you)
4) Une bouteille de Chateauneuf de Pape (because we are in the Rhone wine region)
5) Pate en Croute (not really as nice as you're thinking, this is something only a poor missionary in France would attempt, but we love it)
6) Lots of yogurty desserts - Mmmmmm
7) Boursin (kinda like cream cheese with garlic and chives blended right in)
8) Little toasties like melba toast except intended for adults (for the foie gras and boirsin after the bread goes stale)

After our shopping trip we returned home and feasted on the random France comfort food we had acquired, and it was time to try and sleep.

I think I was awake for more than 5 1/2 hours before I finally gave up and decided to wake up with the houshold - grrrr.

I'll report more on our trip later, but the next day went really well and involved passing out in front of the TV at like 10:30 when I finally conqured "Jet-Lag" and got on schedule.